Tuesday, July 22, 2008

"Really!!?Oricon weekly ranking...#6!!!?(￣□￣;)!!(￣□￣;)!!(￣□￣;)!!Party!!!That's so great, everyone!!Thank you ゜+。(*′∇｀)。+゜The first album in my life at #6...It's thanks to all of you.And the staff worked so hard.Really, thank you so much."

-- from Hirano Aya's blog this morning

I've now had a chance to listen to the album a few times, and I like it. I'd like to have seen unnamed world on it, but I basically like all the new material and most of the old.

She doesn't have a "pretty" voice, but there is actually a lot going on in the way she phrases and inflects the lyrics. And she can rock.

My own favorites on the album? For You, with its swinging energy and emergent melody. The sad joy of Yorokobi no Uta. The way Aya's voice matches the grinding force of the music in Harmonia Vita. And Aya proves, contrary to my expectation, that her voice can handle a ballad in Hoshi no Kakera. Even Aimai Scream/My Ice Cream is cute, and really gets rocking toward the end. And I've always liked Neophilia and Maybe I Can't Goodbye. But my favorite Aya song remains the Uma Kamen theme from the third Sumomo mo momo mo character CD. About the only song on the new album that I don't much enjoy is the title track.

Want a hug? I think she's in the mood to give them today.

The comparatively high placing of this album does have something to do with this being a week in which none of the top acts released albums, as j1m0ne has pointed out, but I think Aya will take it, anyway.

Hers is not a style of singing -- or a quality of voice -- that can appeal to fans of more mainstream acts like Mizuki Nana or Chihara Minori, but I personally play more Hirano than either of them.

Just as j1m0ne, in her full review of this album, complains about the accompaniment overpowering Aya's voice, that's how I feel about the treacly, overblown arrangements favored by Nana-chan. The music of those two singers, both more skilled and popular as singers than Aya is, tends to bore me. Tastes differ. Whether Aya can sing as enjoyably live as post-processed, however, is another matter, as j1m0ne says.

Here is the Lantis page for the album. Here is amazon.com. The new rankings haven't yet shown up on the Oricon website, so I am trusting that Aya got correct information. Here is a fuller listing from 2channel:

j1m0ne says that Hirano should be aiming to get a final total of 25-30,000 in sales to be in the same range as major idol seiyuu like Tamura Yukari or Horie Yui. With almost 23,000 units sold in the first week, she's well on her way to at least that number.

Hashihime

The "Hashihime" or "Bridge Princesses," are characters in the novel The Tale of Genji (Genji Monogatari 源氏物語）. They are daughters of a disgraced prince, living alone with him in a small house at Uji, outside Kyoto. They are important characters in the last ten chapters of the novel.

The Genji can be considered the first real novel in the history of the world. It was written around 1000 AD by a Japanese court lady known as Lady Murasaki, or Murasaki Shikibu.

I think contemporary Japanese literature, including anime and manga, continues to preserve aspects of the Genji, among them sensitive psychological observation, a general passion for romance, and romantic interest in young girls. The main hero of the thousand-page novel, Prince Genji, had a number of present and former girlfriends living in his palace, and basically abducted his principal wife Murasaki when she was ten, marrying her when she was around 15.

notes

-- all Japanese names are written in Japanese order: surname first, given name second-- I claim no copyright on anything in this blog, unless otherwise stated